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Wednesday, 17 February 2016

Is this the 'End Times' of Warhammer 40,000?

Can you think of a subtext to this famous painting?

My wife wants to move. That old chestnut of a 'lack of space' has reared it's head once more and she is busy on Rightmove searching for our next property. Now the purchasing of houses is something I have little to do with, beyond sharing my opinion with my spouse about the properties she selects. Also, I am a firm believer in the maxim: ' a happy wife equals a happy life' and strive to adhere to this philosophy as much as I can.

One symptom of her new desire is the besuited estate agent, all big tie and shiny shoes, and organising the time to meet with them. Sadly for her, the arrival yesterday morning of one polite gentleman from a local agency clashed with another family engagement - an engagement that no amount of wrangling would free herself with.

So, being the roguish dare-devil that I am, yours truly stepped in at the last moment and offered to remain in the house and meet with the gentleman in question. Of course, the prospect of getting some unexpected painting time into the bargain did not cross my mind once.

Honest.

Punctuality being king in this kind of work, I heard a knock at the door at precisely quarter past nine. Greeting me at the doorstep was a very smart and friendly man, a handful of years older than myself, smiling pleasantly, and after a few moments of explanation on my part on the absence of my wife, I invited him in. Being clearly a more experienced estate agent he cut straight to business, asking me a series of questions about the house and impressing me with his knowledge of the area. He was just about to launch into an informative spiel about interest rates when, all of a sudden and quite out of character, he stopped dead.

Silence.

His eyes left me and focused in wonder at something on the other side of the room.

"Is that a Great Spined Dragon from Games Workshop?" he asked, in wonder, all thought of house sales temporary forgotten. I told him that it was and over the next twenty minutes or so guided him through my collection of old school painted Citadel, my gaming tables and Oldhammer paraphernalia. To say that he was astonished that even one man would still be interested in 1980s Warhammer, let alone an international community, would be an understatement.

These unlikely meetings between enthusiasts, even those as lapsed as he, are vital for our hobby. Nay, essential. For without them, wargaming would wither on the vine and decay rapidly. For our experiences are, by and large, social and supportive and without the encouragement and support of our fellows, and the chance to meet up with such like minded souls, what would be the point of all of those toy soldiers and the hours we invest into their creation?

Let us return to the image I began this blog post with. I cannot recall who painted it, but it was produced during the early days of Warhammer 40,000 and represents the main 'human' forces of the Imperium at that time; Imperial Guard, Space Marine and Squat. If you look closer, and are familiar with Rogue Trader iconography, you will notice that the majority of the figures in the painting wear the emblems of the medical corps. This is an image of a last stand, and despite imminent destruction, humanity stands united in all its forms against an unseen foe. Sprawled backwards across the earth lies an ork, giving some indication of who these soldiers are fighting, and the immolated carcass of another marine gives a stark, brutal prophecy of the fate for those still fighting.

Stirring stuff indeed.

I see a subtext in that image. I see the community I used to know, way back in the 1980s, and the one we have worked so hard to build today. A community made of quite different people (represented by the difference 'races' of the Imperium) who by working together and pooling their differences, create a whole far stronger than the sum of its parts. Everybody is on the same page as they say, and are unified in their enjoyment of fantasy wargaming. As it has to be if our hobby is to survive.

The estate agent has just popped in to drop off some paperwork for my wife. He laughed as I told him he'd missed her once again. Unsurprisingly, the subject of Citadel miniatures was soon brought up, though not by me, and our friendly local estate agent went on about his adventures on eBay and Facebook last night. With passion, he explained to me of his interest in the Fiend Factory range and how he is considering collecting all of the models he had as a youth, his eyes beaming with the delight of the hunt and of a beloved hobby restored.

Earlier on in the week, I was in London. I had an hour or so of free time, so popped into a Local Friendly Gaming Store I had discovered on my phone as I am always interested in the wider wargaming world, and attend Salute every year without fail. I was quite surprised what I saw. Two groups of gamers on opposite sides of the venue doing two very different things.

The first group epitomised everything I despise about wargaming. Two charmless individuals were lining up rank upon rank of black undercoated chunky plastic 40k kits, some larger than my daughter's dolls, and fussing over the meta. As I browsed the racking, I eavesdropped on their argument. It appeared that one of them took offence to the other gamer's inclusion of a specific unit and it's armament. Apparently, it wasn't legal! This resulted in some quite fierce words and much scrummaging through rulebooks and computer print outs.

On the other side of the room a bunch of kids were playing something on a smaller table. Shrieks of joy and friendly banter filled the space around them. Walking over, I saw a varied collection of brightly painted models and it was clear that each youth had brought in their own collection, for there was an obvious style to the little groups of models. I realised quite quickly that this must be a game of Age of Sigmar in action and that the young gamers had adapted the rules as they are to suit their own needs.

The younger players we suddenly distracted by one of the most extraordinary things I have ever seen in wargaming. One of the older players, who ready should have known better with children around, swore very explicitly and actually threw one of his complicated looking 40k kits onto the floor of the gaming shop, smashing the the model to pieces! Even his dulled eyed opponent had enough wit to look up in surprise from his glossy codex. The furious player then stalked out of the shop, abandoning his collection of toot and disappeared up the street, striking out at lamp posts and recycling bins all the way. An anxious manager peered perplexedly from the doorway, probably wondering what all the fuss was about before retreating with a shrug back behind his counter. his reaction made me wonder if this was a common occurrence.

What happened to Warhammer 40,000? The game I remember playing was new, exciting and vibrant. The enthusiasm I felt was mirrored by gamers all over the country, in independent stores and of course in White Dwarf. Even in the early days of the internet there was a joy about the game. An excitement and it was fascinating to watch all of the characters at GW develop the game during the Silver Age of Pawl Sawyer as editor of White Dwarf. We all seemed to be on the same page. Now, it is hard to find anything but hatred for the game, or in-fighting. Scroll through any of the many online forums concentrating on the game and you'll see page after page of bitter resentment at GW for 'nerfing' the game and pointless bickering between supposed players of the system!

Was it always like this? Were the gaming groups I knew as a youth, and the ones I know now, in the minority?

In my opinion, Warhammer 40,000 has been destroyed by its players. It seems to me that by far the largest majority of them demand that GW does absolutely everything for them, and then complain if any changes (to rules, background or the miniature ranges) go against their individual needs and desires. Hey, whatever happened to free thinking?

No wonder I am hearing whispers of 40k receiving its own 'End Times' event and the launch of a very different edition of the game. Games Workshop would be doing the right thing if they just dumped the entire backstory and did an 'Age of Sigmar' version of Warhammer 40,000. The future of the game does not belong to the bitter rules lawyers and their black primed hordes of plastic toys, but to the passionate and eager youth and their fantasy 'space marines'. Clubbing together a few sets of Age of Sigmar and battling it out with your mates on a Saturday afternoon is as close as you can get to the much discussed 'Oldhammer Spirit' and totally at odds to the 'win at all costs' mentality of so many 40k players that I meet.

Space Marine models are the biggest sellers that GW have for good reason, they are what the younger generation of gamers enjoy playing with. So if Fenris is set to be bombed by the Dark Angels and a new civil war between the Space Marine chapters is set to explode, then fair play to GW if they inspire more younger gamers to take up the hobby and enjoy rolling dice with their friends, then a very well done should go to them! That is, and was, what fantasy wargaming should be all about.

To conclude, let us return once more to the piece of art I used to open this blog post. The humans we see huddled together, defiant against death and eternal in their support of each other despite the differences in their nature. They represent us! The community spirited gamers, no matter their age, ruleset or miniature preference. As a gamer and collector, all I want to see is the same passion I hold dear for this hobby in others - what they are actually playing is irrelevant. But we are few. Surrounding the heroes in the painting above are the dark and unknown 'foe', bent on the Imperium's utter destruction. And surrounding us, through no fault of our own, are the dark, faceless forces of '40k playerz', our own inexorable foe, who hold only one commandment dear:

53 comments:

40k for the most part has become a arms race (Or has at the very least at the gaming clubs I go too). It's all ''Pay-to-Win'' and those who buy the biggest newest stuff wins. I had a game of current 40k last week it was the first time I played 40k in many years and shocked at how it's become. Now on the same note I had a game of 30k too later that night, while it was still big going boom it felt another flavour and seemed balanced.

Were the two games against the same person, Chico-Chops? Were the differing attitudes of the players to blame for such a difference in style, or was it purely the game mechanics? In my experience, it seems to be an issue with 40k pretty much, as I see lots of fantastic games for other systems - SAGA, Hail Caesar, FoG etc - though dickheadery seems to abound with all of the Mantic games I see.

I agree completely with Chico. GW switching focus to formations (the cynic would say to sell more of the less popular items) has thrown all semblance of balance out of the window and indeed created an arms race (I'd argue moreso among the older players who are more able to see the advantage (read: min/max/power game/abuse) bonus stacking.

More people are moving to FW's 30K setting which has no formations and is therefore shielded from problem (so far)

I think it's important to separate destroying the game and destroying the theme. With Age of Sigmar Games Workshop provided a new, and arguably more fun and accessible, game at the expense of ending the existing theme and replacing it with a frankly rather flat and uninspiring one.

40k has a rich theme supported by a lot of great art and adequate fiction. I wouldn't want to see any End Times like event that threw all that away and replaced it with a new setting.

Just because GW, or any other manufacturer, bins a game it doesn't cease to exist. You can still continue to play it. But as Chico points out with his "Pay-to-Win" comment, for a large group of players keeping up to date with the latest unit or ruleset IS THE GAME! Players like this are on totally a different page to the likes of me. And as the predominate force in 40k gaming, at least from where I am standing, such a mindset is not going to create a healthy attitude to gaming culture or camaraderie, is it? The game is ultimately doomed if this is your market, and with the gradual shift away from a 'tournament'style culture in GW games it seems like Kirby and the boys have realised this.

It may be that GW have realised but that doesn't remove them from the responsibility of creating the situation (through poor/short sighted rules writing) in the first place.

On the whole FW produce much more balanced rulesets and are far more reactive to answering player queries when issues crop up than GW have every been

Don't lose sight of the fact that GW make it very clear to shareholders that are a model company (not a games company). I see their move to systems like Age of Sigmar as an attempt to free them from the need to employ a sizable games design team (just toss some bare bones rules out and let the plyayers get on with it) rather than an attempt to resolve issues with the competative state of the game

GW also released free army lists for every model and unit that existed in the Old World. Just because GW 'destroyed' that reality doesn't mean it's gone from my table. EVERY game I've played of Age of Sigmar has seen my Oldhammer armies take the field. The rules needed a few common sense tweaks (you can't fire missile weapons in melee), but I've thoroughly enjoyed these games. The rules become background and the story elements easily rise to the fore. There are elements of humor scattered through the army lists that we haven't seen in decades. The lack of point values may be an issue for some, but we've discovered if you field an army that LOOKS like a Warhammer army (i.e. A mix of troops rather than spam lists, a handful of characters of varied levels rather than six vampire lords, etc) and play a scenario rather than a brawl both sides have a reasonable chance of victory.

Well written article. I think that over-emphasis on rules and 'balance' cultivates over-competitiveness and rules-lawyering. Although I am not a fan of the new AoS setting, I do see the merit of the 'no points' system. It forces the community to self-regulate and cultivates the fact that this is, above all, a game that we play in our spare time.

It is funny for those of us a little more long in the tooth to see '40k playerz etc' complaining about the 'no points' approach to AoS, when we can all recall a time when this was pretty normal. All the games I played back in the day were no points affairs - we just organised our models into interesting set pieces and played through the action. The resulting narrative being the fun bit and the stuff of conversations afterwards. Self regulation is key here though, but the type of individual who smashes his £60 kit on the floor of a public space isn't going to be able to do so!

Good luck with the house hunting! One tip though - don't break your leg the week before your completion date! ;)

Congrats on discovering and inspiring another collector - there's hope even for estate agents!

Can't believe you actually witnessed a blow out of that magnitude - not so far from the plonker who burned his Dark Elves and posted the video. Sounds like those kids had the right idea - again hope springs eternal.

Looking forward to a game of Rogue Trader with Paul and the rest of the lads in March - we'll do it justice of course.

I know you will - but then Rogue Trader (in all of it's forms) encourages independent thought and scenario building. At least he's rage was directed towards a crappy modern kit though, he could of thrown a fully built Chicken Dragon! Just think of that!

A new chap has joined the place where I work. He plays war games. Another colleague of mine invited him round to his house for a friendly game of WFB.

Neither of us will now play the chap. He epitomises everything that is wrong with current GW players, the tournament mentality. Try and throw a narrative campaign at this guy and he'd immediately try to break it because all he cares about is winning.

Yes, I know the type all too well. "WFB3 is BROKEN becoz you can take VORTEX of chaos on each of your wizards and nerf the game in Turn 1!" In a way, I feel sorry for this players as they are clearly never happy. Browsing through Warseer (though it seems to have died now) or Dakka threads just fills me with despair - where did this miserable horde come from? Was there something in the water?

It's tournaments. Basically giving inadequate the excuse that sports have given inadequately for decades. That's the moment it stops being fun and becomes about winning. And when the manufacturer starts to design the game around the requirements of tournament play then the game is dead as far as using it to tell stories with your friends goes.

I hope that the release of AoS, and the impending redevelopment of the 'Specialist Games', continues to attract younger gamers with a more community minded spirit. Watching those kids enjoying their game reminded me of myself at that age - my imagination pouring into the figures I collected and the game world they inhabit. Playing fast and loose in the face of the actual 'rules' was always a big part of our enjoyment, adhering religiously to anything sounds like sheer torture to me.

The desire is still there; I've been throwing war games at my classes and they've taken well to it (Trafalgar and Warerloo so far). After school Lion Ramoant has gone down well too. So there is a market I the younger ones. I'm not holding out much hope for the new Specialist Games though - the new Bloodbowl Minis, for example, seem to lack all charm and humour. I can't see a dwarf steamroller here. And then there's the cost. When we were kids, £20 for Space Hulk was expensive but doable on pocket money if you saved a bit. The new one was £90. That's not priced for kids; that's priced for collectors.

You got me in the feels! As a decidedly non-young gamer, it's been so refreshing to once again experience that fresh enthusiasm with Age of Sigmar, after nearly being broken with the bitterness of WFB comp over the last decade.

Never mind all that about 'endings'. A setting only ends if you stop thinking about it. I still have all my fluff books, after all. Most of my AOS games so far have been based in the Old World.

Spoken like a true gamer. My little gaming group meets three or four times a year, and we always use WFB3 and the Old World setting but it is always highly skewed in the direction we want to take. I have created a setting called 'Far Corfe' which was inspired by the pun heavy humour of '80s Warhammer and our need to snigger at rude names even in our thirties. But the enthusiasm in there - after all, who wants to play against a miserable sod?

Thank you for this highly enjoyable and so true report. This is btw the reason, why I personally prefer SoBH and AoS way over the highly praised KoW. Rulemongers playing - at best -with undercoated or even unpainted "models" to defeat each other does nothing for me!

I agree with you Fincas. The hideous 'unpainted' blocks of troops do nothing for me at all and just show how disconnected some players are with the 'spectacle' approach to wargaming. As a shared experience, we all contribute hours of our time towards creating something that looks remarkable on the table. You know, I once saw a game going badly for a player in the Peterborough store and having lost one of his key units, promptly bought a different unit of the shelf (still in the box and unassembled) and planted it on the table. For the next hour, he moved this box around like it was an actual unit. Quite why his opponent didn't just leave there an then remains a mystery to me!

I don't know much about KoW apart from the games I see at Salute. Some of the groups put on very impressive 'spectacle games' and are clearly having some serious fun when doing so. Others look to me to be a sad clone of Warhammer - big blocks of rectangular units lined up about two feet part from each other.

@ Hebert: Maybe, I was unnecessarily harsh. I played KoW 1st with a good buddy using our (fully painted) 10mm collection and it was a spectacle. However we were lacking the fun events that gave the battle some unforeseen twists. With pre-measuring, units never fail a charge, you never move into charge distance "by accident", fun units like gobbo-fanaticks and magick all just work as things causing more wounds. No units rout, etc.

Back in my club, however, I saw two of the people, who hate AoS, play it. One had only silver models, not even glued onto their bases, the other had an army that was at least partially painted, but a 40-something block to my horror was just represented by a plastic base of the appropriate size!

For them tabletop wargaming was bashing your opponent in the most efficient way and rolling buckets full of dice thereby. Needles to say that the only piece of terrain was a 8" fence in the middle of the table....:(

I dont say, you couldnt have fun with the KoW rules. They are just a bit too streamlined for my idea - and they definitely favour powergaming. I highly recommend Warmaster or Hail Caesar in a fantasy variant if you want easy play and spectacle.

Lots of people assume I dislike Age of Sigmar with a passion, but this is not the case. Obviously, it is not 'my game' and shares a miniature range and background that does not interest me. But I love to see the younger kids getting involved and enjoying community gaming just like I did.

I am beginning to wonder if AoS as a boxset will become the 'Heroquest' of this generation and steer a bunch of younger people into a rewarding, life long hobby.

Secondly, I don't want to sprout one of those "exciting origin stories" everybody has but I'll try and be concise and just say that the game for me has always been about squads of troops or "grunts" with lashings of the other stuff and the further it gets away from that the worse.

I have enough stuff painted up these days to go to town (well, circa 1994) but to be honest some of the best games have been the bare bones, almost starter set ones-with a lot of terrain.Games of 40K I see being played at the FLGS never have enough terrain, barely any really.

I agree with you on the bare bones view of gaming. My favourite games of WFB have always been small scale, on an intricate board with varied and realistic scenery. Often, it is the scenery that shifts the narrative of the game a notch further and introduces events and tactical decisions beyond just lining them up and knocking them down!

I'm going to provide a point of dissent. I think it's a mistake to view Games Workshops actions from any perspective other than the desire to just sell more models.

The absence of points values in Age of Sigmar does encourage innovation, self-regulation and story-telling, but only in players already in that frame of mind. For the hyper-competitive player, all it does is give an inbuilt advantage to the player with the largest collection. Thus encouraging more model buying. I remember enough about my early days of gaming in the early 1990s to know young players who would definitely take advantage of their parent's bank accounts to give them an edge.

At the same, ditching points eliminates the inbuilt collection size limit that used to exist. It used to be the case that once you got to 2000, 3000, 4000 points, you could feel like your army was complete. No longer, now your collection can grow indefinitely. Plus, by adopting the ongoing narrative concept, they can exploit the War Machine/Hordes/Malifaux idea of requiring endless updates to your army to counter whatever knew stuff all the other players have got.

If Age of Sigmar encourages a stronger sense of community and less rules-lawyering that's all to the good, but I doubt it will be because that's what Games Workshop intends.

Hahaha , lots of laughs reading this , great article!The good part is clearly that agent firing up discovering your collection , the sad part of those stupid "today gamers" is double sad since I can certify that here in Spain is almost the same if you take a look around , I cannot even count how many 30 cm plastic Knights did I saw over the last 2 years :O

Games Workshop has molded the playerbase into what it is today. By manipulating rules to drive sales, they have alienated 'true' fans of the game - by making it nigh unplayable.It has also attracted and cultivated the 'WAAC' mentality. Formations, shameful yet intentional imbalance - this is the foundation Games Workshop has laid before us.Now the much of the playerbase consists of the worst of out community.

GW holds the cards, their greed and indignant lack of vision is what caused this.

I agree with Herbert West (isn't he a H P Lovecraft character?). The tournament mentality has a lot to answer for, especially in games like 40k and Flames of War, but also Fantasy Battle. I've actually heard people talking about investing in a game and how the designers of said game have nerfed their chosen army so it is no longer competitive. A game of 40k should involve about four sides (one controlled by the GM). Space Marines should be human sized, have Toughness 3 and die in droves and Abdul Goldberg should be involved. Scenery will include at least one hab unit made from yoghurt pots and vehicles made from shower gel containers and bits of old Zoids.

An interesting story. From what I've seen Age of Sigmar is the type of game where you can't help but to introduce a narrative and experiment with the rules. This has shocked the tournament players and the power gamers who used the internet to claim Warhammer for themselves and so it must be doing something right! I don't play it since I am happy with WFB 3rd edition and the other games I already play. However I have never needed the official approval of a company and constantly updated rules to have fun, others strangely don't seem to be able to do this. The amount of upset on some forums would suggest that Games Workshop were kicking in doors and confiscating Warhammer players precious army books and imprisoning people who tried to play a game of Warhammer with the gaming groups they had managed to arrange games with for the last five years.

The lack of points and encouragement find balance with your opponent is a welcome attempt at stepping away from the obsession with army lists. Hopefully it will encourage people who want to play regularly to respect their opponent and adjust their selections accordingly. Some of the players starting out with Age of Sigmar might even try out older editions of Warhammer sometime, sticking with a hobby that was fun and welcoming rather than full of people throwing models, power gamers, older players telling them they would lose their first 20 games (as one forums post on advice to new players used to state)nand the belief that you had to paint multiple units of 50 models in order to even start playing!

I think there are strange players in all different game systems and always have been. I can remember a players throwing with dice and models 15 years ago. It is not only 40K, all competitive wargames (Warmachine,...) have these individuals. I also know a lot of nice 40K players (especially Tournament players have nice painted armies) . And there had always been unpainted models around, also in 3rd edition WH, nothing new.

The major problem with GW and 40K is, that people want a balanced tournament system. This is the basis where to build upon campaigns, house rules, cool large games etc.But GW provides a chaos of rules, non balanced Codex books. You can`t play the game against people you don`t know as you might play against very strange army composition. Winning 40K is about list building, not about tactics. This is why many normal gamers/fluff gamers stopped with 40K as they don`t want to participate with this. WH Fantasy had a similar way, this is why it had gone down after 7th edition. AOW is just rolling dice, there are much better (easy) Games out there to use your Oldhammer models with. 30K works, because it is Space Marines vs Space Marines.

The shift in focus back towards narrative games on a smaller scale is one of the few things I like about Age of Sigmar. Unfortunately the hideous models and bland setting counter-balance that.There is of course nothing to stop me using the original Old World setting, and my old-school minis but from a lot of the accounts I've heard the rules are pretty lack-lustre too.

On another point related to this article, I do sometimes think that the WAAC mentality folk have always existed. Later editions of Warhammer/40k catered more to those folks as the tournament scene kicked off, whereas earlier editions worked to ameliorate that tendency by having a large degree of randomisation embedded in the rulesets - The RoC, Ork and RT books in particular were filled with random tables for determining things like army composition, psychic powers, scenarios, wandering monsters, terrain types etc. It makes it easy to spot (and avoid!) WAACos when you see their army list consists of all the most beneficial results available in a statistically improbable combination

I am almost 40. I played a lot of Necromunda, WFB and Epic 40,000. Me and my friends never played to win. We were playing a story, a simulation, an experience. And then we tried to win as a secondary objective. But winning was never the reason to play. Back in the days it was not about competition and rankings. It was about the experience.

I love that painting. It was a Dave Galagher job (I think) used to illustrate the article introducing, unsurprisingly, medics into the Imperium forces. Just seeing it again reminds me of those days. Back then no-one really knew what was in a space marine chapter and the introduction of medics and at around the same time chaplains and commissars really helped bring the background to life. Those days were great.

noce article, i dont like the aos fluff and those stormcast models are stupid looking, but its a fun game to play! have to ask tho, whats wrong with black undercoated miniatures? im "oldhammer"(collecting since 1990) too and iv always undercoated my miniatures in black